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Kraal

Kraal is an Afrikaans and Dutch word for an enclosure for cattle or other livestock, located within an African settlement or village surrounded by a palisade, mud wall, or other fencing, roughly circular in form.
In the Dutch language a kraal is a term derived from the Portuguese word curral, cognate with the Spanish-language corral, which entered into English separately.
The term primarily refers to the type of dispersed homestead characteristic of the Nguni-speaking peoples of southern Africa. Although from the period of colonisation, European South Africans and historians commonly referred to the entire settlement as a kraal, ethnographers have long recognised that its proper referent is the animal pen area within a homestead. Modern ethnographers call the several human dwellings within a homestead houses.
Folds for animals and enclosures made specially for defensive purposes are also called kraals.
In Eastern and Central Africa, the equivalent word for a livestock enclosure is boma, but this has taken on wider meanings.